50 years ago, the KKK killed Clifton Walker — the FBI has never talked with his family

Fifty years ago today, a mob ambushed Clifton Earl Walker Sr. on Poor House Road — believed to be the first slaying by Mississippi’s homegrown White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the most violent white supremacist group in the U.S.

As midnight neared, Walker was driving home from his late shift at the International Paper plant when the mob stopped his car on the dirt road off U.S. 61, seven miles north of Woodville, Miss. The men surrounded the African-American man and shot him repeatedly in the face. In the hours that followed, the 37-year-old World War II veteran bled to death.

His killing languished in obscurity until 2009 when the FBI reopened it along with 109 other unsolved civil rights cold cases, pursuant to a groundbreaking bill sponsored by civil rights hero, U.S. Rep. John Lewis: the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act of 2007.

Congressman John Lewis

Last November, Walker’s daughter, Catherine Walker Jones, received a letter from the Justice Department that the case had been closed. The words stunned her since agents investigating the case had never spoken to anyone in her family.

The Justice Department closed the case after a perfunctory rehash of the 1964 Mississippi Highway Patrol investigation with many avenues of investigation unexplored. Al Jazeera English recently took a look at the closure of the case:

Walker’s daughter, Catherine, now 64, said she’s been “disappointed in the manner in which promises are made by the Justice Department to families that have not gotten closure for the death of their loved ones. It’s like you make it sound real good with the Cold Case Initiative, but there was no substance to it, none whatsoever.”

Catherine Walker Jones and Shirley Walker Wright hold a picture of their father, Clifton Walker, and stand on Poor House Road, where he was killed. (Photo by Ben Greenberg)

No one “did any time in jail for killing a human being, a father, a husband, an American citizen, a veteran,” she said. “You have people going to jail for killing dogs today. And there he was, a human being.”

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Born in 1927 in Woodville, Miss., Walker was the last of nine children. Despite being the youngest, his siblings respected him.

When he saw them arguing with their wives, he would “pull his brothers on the side and tell them you don’t talk to your wife that way,” Catherine said. “He was such a gentleman.”

His family called him “Man,” and the nickname stuck.

Ruby Walker (Photo courtesy of the Walker family)

One Sunday in 1943, walking home from Sunday school, he met Ruby C. Phipps. Two years later, they married, and “the young couple made a beautiful set,” she later wrote.

Before World War II ended, he became a part of it, and he returned home to see his family grow.

Their daughter, Shirley, remembers them working together as a unit, “taking care of their children, teaching them what they needed to know to live in this world.”

Catherine said their father made sure the family never went without. “We didn’t have to cook on the wood stove. Daddy got a gas stove and a washing machine,” she said. “He invested well, and she maintained their money well.”

The couple would plan their purchases of their car and their washer, she said. “They would talk at night when they thought we were all asleep. We would hear them talking. They would talk about the Christmas gifts they would get us.”

U.S. soldiers fight in the Korean War, which lasted from 1950-1953.

In the 1950s, the Korean War came calling, and Walker headed to serve in the U.S. Army.

But a knee injury cut his time short, and he returned home to work at the nearby International Paper plant about 30 miles north of Natchez in southwest Mississippi.

The plant paid better than many places, but by the early 1960s, it, along with Armstrong Tire, had become hotbeds for Ku Klux Klan recruitment.

Walker’s death was the first of 10 killings that the FBI believes the White Knights were responsible for, including the 1964 killings of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner.

The White Knights of the KKK are believed to have been responsible for at least 10 killings.

After Walker’s body was found, three of Walker’s brothers-in-law drove 55 miles south to Baton Rouge to see Ronnie Moore, who was Louisiana field secretary for the Council on Racial Equality.

According to FBI documents, the three men talked to Moore, and he called and told the bureau that “Walker had been shot down in Mississippi and that nothing had been done about it by local authorities.”

On March 1, 1964, FBI agents reported meeting with Ronnie Moore and the three brothers-in-law of the victim. FBI Headquarters responded the next day with an order to “contact the Sheriff to ascertain if he is conducting any investigation of this matter and obtain any details available” and to send the bureau copies of any local newspaper coverage of the murder.

The FBI opened the case, closed it a few months later, then briefly reopened it before moving on without resolution in December 1964, at which point the highway patrol investigation also came to a close.

The devastation lasted much longer for the family.

Clifton Walker’s headstone in a cemetery in Woodville, Miss. (Photo by Ben Greenberg)

In the days following the funeral, Walker’s widow, Ruby, had a breakdown that frightened her children. “When Mama didn’t recognize her children, I knew we were in trouble,” said Catherine.

Ruby recovered from the breakdown, but she had to take medication to sleep each night until her death in 1992 at the age of 65.

Walker’s son, Cliff Jr., was 10 at the time of the slaying.

“He didn’t realize or know Daddy,” Catherine recalled. “He was the kind of man a son really should have known.”

She managed to survive, thanks to her late father, she said. “He’s the sole reason that I’m alive today because his memory meant more to me than I meant to myself at one period.”

Depression overwhelmed her, she said. “It was just easier to die than live with the hurt and the agony of knowing that someone you loved more than the man you prayed to was gone. And it was a bitter, bitter struggle actually dealing with God because He could have prevented this and He didn’t.”

Despite what she’s seen, she continues to believe justice is possible, she said, “No justice has ever happened in dealing with my father, and if it doesn’t happen during my time, I’m afraid it’s not ever gonna happen.”

— Ben Greenberg has been investigating Clifton Walker’s killing and other cold cases from the civil rights era since 2004. He is a founding member of the Civil Rights Cold Case Project along with Jerry Mitchell and other journalists. Reach him at minorjive at gmail dot com or 617-440-4635 or find him at his website, benlog.net, or on twitter.

About The Author

Jerry Mitchell, an investigative reporter for The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., runs Journey to Justice, a blog that explores the intersection of justice and culture in this place we call the United States​. His work has helped put four Klansmen behind bars, including the assassin of NAACP leader Medgar Evers in 1963 and the man who orchestrated the Klan’s 1964 killings of three civil rights workers. His latest stories have helped lead to the arrest of serial killer suspect Felix Vail — the last known person seen with three women. Mitchell, a 2009 MacArthur fellow, is writing a book on cold cases from the civil rights era.